NVIDIA nForce 6 vs Intel ICH7 and ICH8

Recently, we looked at the latest chipsets from Intel and Nvidia, the 975X/P965 and nforce 680i SLI. Performance differences are minor, yet the latter's features outmatch those of Intel's offerings. But is Nvidia's shining star also capable of outperforming Intel when it comes to storage and USB 2.0 performance? We went back to the test lab to look into it.

You might wonder why this is so important - and the question is legitimate. For the average Joe it doesn't really matter. Any Serial ATA controller provides more bandwidth than a hard drive can possibly utilize, and most USB 2.0 controllers also offer transfer rates close to the theoretical maximum. But enthusiasts and hardcore users do care whether or not performance drops as more than a single USB device operates at full bandwidth, or what the bandwidth or I/O performance of a RAID array with four hard drives is like..